February 16, 2005

Ember

Churchers have kept the Ember Days in the calendar for maybe fifteen hundred years or so and devoted the time especially to praying about parsons, presuming we need them, figuring out ways to get more and make them all worthwhile at the same time. It’s a tall order, usually short on fulfillment.

I imagine somebody knows (and will probably tell me) why we call the Ember Days Ember Days. I don’t, and my limited research has produced nothing. The best I can come up with is that embers, as pleasant as may be the sight of them, only suggest one thing, fading out and cooling off. Maybe the four Ember seasons are to remind us ever so often what a good idea that would be for parsons in particular and for us as a whole.

We clerics seem to me more often than not to be too prominent, like who needs both drum majors and cheer leaders all the time? We could fade into the liturgical woodwork and probably accomplish more. And too many of us often get too hot under the collar about things that seem so altogether insignificant that any amount of cooling off would be welcome. You, too, / in the pew.

Ember Days. Maybe what they’ve meant all along is a time to fade out and cool off.

No Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.